Guest Viewpoint: 'Green' power not ready to deliver what we need

Mar. 1, 2013

Written by

Bill Owen

In a recent letter “Natural gas not good ‘bridge’ to solar, wind,” the author cites the study by Robert Howarth from Cornell University as a reason not to think of natural gas as a bridge fuel to solar and wind.

The problem with this conclusion is that it is based on a flawed premise, namely that Howarth’s study is accurate. Subsequent studies from other sources, including Lawrence Cathles from Cornell, a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a study from Carnegie Mellon University (partly funded by the Sierra Club) and others in academia and government and even environmental circles (NRDC, Environmental Defense Fund) have repudiated the Howarth’s findings, which are less based in science than activism. For example, he uses data from 2007 rather than more recent data, and decades-old data from the Soviet Union. Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that in 2011 greenhouse gas emissions fell 4.6 percent due largely to power plants switching from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas.

The truth is, we need a bridge fuel, and natural gas is it. With today’s wind technology, for example, it would take more than 1,000 turbines at 2 megawatts each to even begin to replace the 2,000-megawatt Indian Point nuclear plant, which the governor would like to shut down. And that number assumes that all wind turbines are up and running at full capacity all the time — unlikely given the variability of wind and the need for maintenance. According to National Wind Watch (wind-watch.org), the average land use is about 50 acres per megawatt of wind production, so that’s about 50,000 acres of the pristine lands that the anti-gas crowd loves to tout as a reason to ban drilling that would need be clear-cut.

It’s great to advocate for more solar and wind power, but it would be better to put effort into actually building wind farms and solar power stations rather than denying the need for a bridge until those other technologies are economically feasible. Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.